Smart contracts on Zano — any plans, or worth discussing?

[shomari]

just curious whether the team/community has ever talked about adding smart contracts to Zano?

privacy and (public-by-default) smart contracts seem to pull in opposite directions – so it's NOT an obvious fit – but the topic comes up often enough that I thought it warranted a public discussion

anyone have a strong view either way?

this was NOT AI generated

cheers!

[monerodatruth]

It's currently being worked on, per our current roadmap, and it's called: Zano Execution Layer (ZEL)

It's an EVM sidechain that brings smart contracts to the ecosystem while Zano L1 remains the privacy chain.

[shomari]

that's such GREAT NEWS!

i've been looking for some time now, but hadn't seen ZEL mentioned before, glad to hear it's on the roadmap

any details on the tech stack?

but what i'm really curious about – how does privacy work across the two layers?

if the EVM sidechain handles contracts and the L1 handles privacy, is there a bridge mechanism that keeps amounts/addresses hidden when assets move between them?

[tommycat]

Smart contracts are essential for any blockchain ecosystem and I'm looking forward to the Zano implementation.

Great questions shomari.

[monerodatruth]

You can read more about the cross-chain aspect here: https://blog.zano.org/zano-goes-cross-chain-native-zano-is-coming-to-bridgeless/

[shomari]

oh great!
thanks for the link

makes perfect sense for using Bridgeless to "external" chains; but ZEL is Zano's own sidechain – so the question remains, "is ZEL itself privacy-preserving or just standard (public) EVM?"

if it's the latter, fUSD in an AMM pool there would have visible amounts and balances – and perhaps be considered too big a (privacy) shift from the L1

not sure what the plan is, but here are 2 possibilities:
(1) Aztec is doing zk-powered private smart contracts with their Noir language — probably the closest thing to real private EVM execution – and definitely the one I'd favor

(2) while Railgun takes a different approach – utilizing shielded pools on top of existing EVM chains rather than privacy at the execution layer

imo, both are pretty interesting – but also feel very different in terms of what they'd mean for (and how they'd integrate into) ZEL

any sense of which direction the team is leaning?
or perhaps it's still early

[htzano]

yeah Zel is a public EVM, privacy is about where you hold assets, not where they execute at least for this set up.
ZEL is basically a utility layer for assets , bridge in, do the public defi stuff bridge back to Zano L1 where everything stays confidential.
So yeah, an fUSD pool on ZEL would be fully visible.
not really sure about your other questions

[igreks]

Idk. But adding smart contracts, imo, could open up a lot for Zano, but the privacy side of things makes it a bit more complicated than just adding them.

Would be interesting to hear what the team/community thinks about it.

[barryson]

@shomari
I think it’s worth exploring, but I wouldn’t want smart contracts added at the expense of what makes Zano different.